Mayer Sveta, Dumontheil Iroise, Wilkinson Hannah R, Porayska-Pomsta Kaska, Farran Emily K, Tolmie Andrew K, Mareschal Denis
UCL Faculty of Education and Society, University College London, Camden, London, United Kingdom.
Centre for Educational Neuroscience, Birkbeck University of London, Camden, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2025 Sep 2;20(9):e0330934. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0330934. eCollection 2025.
Smooth social interactions rely on children's abilities to decode others' social signals, which includes what an individual may say or do, and their facial emotional expressions. Failure can lead to exclusion from social groups. Consequently, a number of social and emotional learning (SEL) training programmes have been developed, with some evidence of positive impacts on those skills themselves and on academic achievement. Here, we present and evaluate the efficacy of a novel classroom-based computerized learning activity, called SEE+ (Socio-emotional engagement through observation), in supporting and enhancing 7- to 10-year-olds' emotion recognition and theory of mind judgements through observation and inference. SEE+ involved observing four virtual characters interacting within social scenarios and inferring their mental states. Participants were recruited from across diverse school settings (rural, urban) in England as part of a large-scale randomised controlled trial (n = 5585; 7.3-11.0 years old, M age = 9.1, SD = 1.0) resulting in a mix of socio-economic and ethnic backgrounds. Mixed model ANOVAs were used to compare performance on socio-emotional tasks between the SEE+ group, an active control group and a teaching-as-usual control group. SEE + was associated with the equivalent of 4-6 months improvement in performance on the socio-emotional assessment tasks. Children showed near transfer effects of the intervention (i.e., when characters present in the computerized learning activity were used in the assessment), while no strong evidence of far transfer effects (i.e., when photographs of unknown children were used in the assessment) was found. Limitations were the use of pen-and-paper assessments with a reduced number of trials, and a possible ceiling effect in the older children in the photograph condition. Our findings point to the relative plasticity of younger children's socio-emotional cognition and underscore SEE+ as an easy-to-use cost-effective socio-emotional resource for teachers to embed SEL in the school curriculum.
顺畅的社交互动依赖于儿童解读他人社交信号的能力，这包括一个人可能说的话或做的事，以及他们的面部情绪表达。社交互动失败可能导致被社会群体排斥。因此，已经开发了一些社会情感学习（SEL）培训项目，有证据表明这些项目对这些技能本身以及学业成绩有积极影响。在此，我们展示并评估一种名为SEE+（通过观察实现社会情感参与）的新型课堂计算机化学习活动的效果，该活动通过观察和推理来支持和提高7至10岁儿童的情绪识别和心理理论判断能力。SEE+包括观察四个虚拟角色在社交场景中的互动并推断他们的心理状态。作为一项大规模随机对照试验（n = 5585；年龄7.3 - 11.0岁，平均年龄M = 9.1，标准差SD = 1.0）的一部分，参与者从英国不同的学校环境（农村、城市）招募，涵盖了不同的社会经济和种族背景。使用混合模型方差分析来比较SEE+组、积极对照组和常规教学对照组在社会情感任务上的表现。SEE+与社会情感评估任务的表现提高相当于4至6个月的进步相关。儿童在干预中表现出近迁移效应（即当在计算机化学习活动中出现的角色用于评估时），而未发现远迁移效应的有力证据（即当评估中使用未知儿童的照片时）。局限性在于使用纸笔评估且试验次数减少，以及在照片条件下年龄较大的儿童可能存在天花板效应。我们的研究结果表明年幼儿童的社会情感认知具有相对可塑性，并强调SEE+是一种易于使用且具有成本效益的社会情感资源，可供教师将SEL融入学校课程。
